[Hadith]

“The Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—laid down that a camel may be offered on behalf of seven people, and a cow on behalf of seven.”

Al-Shāfiʿī and Abū Ḥanīfah, on the basis of this narration, drew an analogy and applied the same ruling to the animals of ʿEid al-Aḍḥā, treating them like the sacrificial offerings (hady) of pilgrimage. Mālik, however, preferred the original rule to the analogy built upon that report, arguing that Jābir’s ḥadīth refers to the time when the idolaters prevented the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—from reaching the Sacred House. The animal offered by one who is thus prevented (hady al-muḥṣar), he maintained, is only voluntary, not obligatory; and in voluntary hady partnership is permissible in his school, whereas in obligatory hady it is not. If, however, one were to hold that the udḥiyah itself is non-obligatory, it could indeed be assimilated to that hady.

Ibn al-Qāsim reports from Mālik another view: that partnership is impermissible in hady altogether, whether voluntary or obligatory—an opinion that in effect dismisses the ḥadīth because it conflicts with the foundational principle.

All scholars unanimously agree that no more than seven persons may share in a single sacrificial animal, even though isolated reports from Rāfiʿ ibn Khadīj, Ibn ʿAbbās, and others state:

“A camel may suffice for ten.”

Al-Ṭaḥāwī remarks: “Their consensus that more than seven may not share in the sacrifice proves that those narrations are unsound.”

Mālik’s permission for a man to include the members of his household in his udḥiyah or hady rests on a report he transmitted from Ibn Shihāb, who said:

“The Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—never slaughtered on behalf of his household more than one camel or one cow.”

Mālik was nonetheless opposed in the matter of sacrifices—specifically, partnership—because consensus had already formed prohibiting such partnership among unrelated persons; by analogy, therefore, relatives should be treated like non-relatives. Mālik distinguished between them only because he likened the udḥiyah to the hady on the strength of the ḥadīth he cited, namely the report of Ibn Shihāb.

Their disagreement, then, ultimately returns to a clash of analogies in this field: whether to assimilate relatives to strangers, or to assimilate the udḥiyah to the hady.